Dear Kiki: When weed intervenes

Questions about love and sex in the city of Iowa City can be sent to dearkiki@littlevillagemag.com (queries can also be sent anonymously using this form). Questions may be edited for clarity and length, and may appear either in print or online.

Kiki,

One question: What if I am a better lover when I smoke weed?

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— Pot Lover

Dear Pot Lover,

It’s common for people to feel like better lovers when they are under some kind of influence. Your guard is down, inhibitions are low and you can feel physical pleasure more acutely. (Unless you’re like old Kiki here, and smoking grass makes you feel like you are being eaten by fire ants!) Make sure you ask your lover(s) what they think about this theory of yours. They may agree, but they may also enjoy a sober you being more emotionally present during your lovemaking. They may enjoy a variety of states. If you enjoy being high, and they enjoy you being high, I say mazel tov. May we all be laid well and often. One word of caution, though: Bad habits are more easily made than broken, and they can grow to become serious addictions. If you must get stoned in order to have sex, or you must be stoned every time you have sex, I’d raise an eyebrow and start mixing it up a little.

Dear Kiki,

Both my partner and I smoke weed pretty much every day. We both smoked recreationally before, but since getting together and moving in we smoke more. We have a lot less sex than we used to, though; both of us initiate a lot less. Could it just be the evolution of our relationship and the honeymoon ending, or is it the weed? Is it actually a problem if we’re both okay with it?

— Weedy

Hi Weedy,

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It sounds like you’ve both gotten pretty comfortable with sex, with the weed smoking, and with each other, which certainly isn’t a problem. It sounds lovely! Most people do tend to taper off the supercharged sexing after the initial passionate “honeymoon” wears off. How much sex you’re having (or who initiates it) doesn’t worry me as long as nobody is harboring any frustration about it.

What does worry me is that it sounds like your relationship has incubated a more serious kind of pot use than either of you were into previously. Recreational smoking can be a blast, and stimulate social, creative and sexual energy. But if you use pot constantly, every day, you are checking out of reality constantly, every day. Is the reality of your relationship and your home life with your partner something you both need to constantly check out of, dull, blur and obscure? Is smoking pot fun for you, and do you do fun things together while you’re stoned? Is smoking a way of never confronting each other, or working on individual projects or issues you’re having outside the relationship? What happens if one person wants to cut back or stop for a while?

One way to test some of these theories out is to take a dedicated amount of time off from smoking at all (a week, a month, etc.) See what happens! See how much sex you have, what you do to keep busy, what you talk about, and how your relationship looks and feels when you’re both straight for a few days. A little experimentation never hurt anyone, did it? xoxo, Kiki